Best Practices for Business-Quality Communications: Moving to a Higher Level of Maturity than E-mail The Capability Maturity Model (CMM) is a widely recognized framework for evaluating the formality and optimization of processes.E-mail is a highly immature (CMM Level 1, Chaotic) means of creating, sharing, and managing business records.  A more mature process for meeting the underlying requirements would achive the following goals. Vision_676bac22-3425-482e-8d44-c8a4c03b54a8 Mission_676bac22-3425-482e-8d44-c8a4c03b54a8 Strategic Alignment Enable users to retrieve information that is directly and explicitly related to their own objectives. Goal_fbb240e2-2734-42bd-8612-8170af14c5b0 1 Importance & Relevance Enable users to automatically prioritise communications according to relevance to tasks which are aligned with their strategic objectives. Goal_921342fc-ea9b-401d-810c-f1abebcc00aa 2 Enable users to automatically prioritise communications according to relevance to tasks which are aligned with their strategic objectives. Retrieval Enable users to retrieve information exactly when and where they choose. Goal_9a48c03f-80ae-4e35-b3b7-247b1e9aa974 3 Enable users to retrieve information exactly when and where they choose. Narrow Casting Enable users to receive information that is discretely targeted to them based upon their personal attributes, interests, and particularly their intentions (longer-term goals and near-term objectives). Goal_905ab8bf-0e8d-4ad1-827a-490904c61e1d 4 Enable users to receive information that is discretely targeted to them based upon their personal attributes, interests, and particularly their intentions (longer-term goals and near-term objectives). Attachments Prohibit the transmittal of attachments Goal_278e50aa-4086-4189-8797-59dbb9bec721 5 Requirements Enable usage of the applications, tools, and services that are well suited to the underlying requirements. Goal_9ec179b0-d00a-4bf2-b8fc-ada328dd610d 6 Enable usage of the applications, tools, and services that are well suited to the underlying requirements. Trusted Networks Establish White List trusted networks based upon an open standard(s). Goal_bf6c00b6-701a-4d5a-88d5-6122542584de 7 Establish White List trusted networks based upon an open standard(s). De-Duplication Disallow the needless duplication of information. Goal_b56e4a98-4349-4483-8846-b7c6c90861ca 8 Disallow the needless duplication of information. Context Ensure that business records contain sufficient context. Goal_7a06c829-785a-4fe0-a519-99c030f97f0b 9 Each business record should contain sufficient context to meet the requirements for the purpose for which it was created. Additionally, sufficient metadata should be associated with each record to facilitate its management and discovery. E-Discovery Reduce the cost and increase the precision of discovery. Goal_5e5d08c1-8f08-4880-bf8f-c6bd91ec3516 10 Apply the best practices outlined in this plan in order to reduce the cost and increase the precision of discovery not only in litigation but also in support of routine business processes as well as queries by interested stakeholders. Spoliation Ensure that records cannot be destroyed except in accordance with an approved disposition schedule. Goal_3adbb6ab-b38b-4541-96a1-d49e78356cf4 11 Ensure that records may not be destroyed or made inaccessible if they may exist anywhere else. Vampire Effect Avoid using systems that enable the distribution of records in way that are unmanageable. Goal_c802d785-b13a-4758-9b31-7e6b8c69fd08 12 Avoid using systems that enable the distribution of records in ways that are unmanageable. Collaboration Use tools, applications, and services that meet the underlying requirements for efficient and effective collaboration Goal_dbf3b38a-40ec-433e-9c21-f957b7ae4354 13 Linkages Linkages Goal_90343cdd-eee2-4b43-b480-a7e4584f8e09 14 Allow links to be created between any different pieces of information whilst retaining the context of both the source and the destination. Security Security Goal_b08854b9-a115-42d5-8690-1653bef5f41c 15 Communications should be secured against unauthorised access. Security is required both for information during transmission, and when it is in storage. Identity Each party to a communication should be verifiably identified Goal_ed58f9a0-dc2b-4288-bd9c-d4c6e31a8311 16 Identity confers context and credibility, and helps to prevent fraud. It is a requirement for contractual arrangements, KYC-type regulations, and in the event of communications subject to non-disclosure agreements. Email is often the only way to collaborate through corporate firewalls When corporates do implement collaboration tools, they frequently contain access to them within their firewalls. As business becomes more flexible, making greater use of third party collaboration, email is often one of the few ways of sharing written communications and documents between organisations. To succeed, collaboration tools, and they way they are implemented, will need to overcome this limitation. Email is near universal One of emails biggest strengths is its near universality. Almost everyone has an eamil address (if not more than one), and almost anyone with with an email address can communication with almost anyone else with an email address. In that sense it is like the telephone or postal mail. I believe that this occured since the introduction of the POP3 and SMTP standards. A post-email environment will need standards which are a simple and widely adopted. Currently the world appears to be moving in the opposite direction. Consider the widespread adoption of various social media platforms, each of which is more or less proprietary, without so much as the adoption of RSS/Atom as a base standard. Spam According to security company Symantec in its monthly intelligence report. - For the first time in twelve years, less than half of emails are spam - real emails are outnumbering junk for the first time since 2003. - Spam still makes up 49.7 per cent of emails. - This is the first time the percentage of spam dips below 50 per cent, but spam levels have been dropping for years, partly because of legal action being taken, and partly because better and more aggressive filters are keeping it out of our inboxes and so making it less profitable. - It would also appear that spam’s disappearing quickly, as it’s gone down by 2.4 percentage points in just two months. Although the report only measures Symantec’s clients, which stand at roughly two per cent of the market, it’s enough to give a good snapshot. Email is not good at managing context Email typically manages context by simply repeating previous emails in a thread in an ever-increasing trail at the bottom of each message. Communications become bloated with repetiton and where thread branch and merge over time the context can quickly become confused.  The more recent introduction of threads at the interface level partially solves the problem from the user perspective, and text deduplication algorithms can alleviate some, but ot all of the sorage and transmission overhead. HOwever, these are workarounds, rather than fundamental improvements. Email has increased the volume of written communications, but reduced its quality From: A modest proposal: eliminate email, HBR, 18 February 2016 "Accompanying the rise of this technology was a new, unstructured workflow in which all tasks — be it a small request from HR or collaboration on a key strategy — are now handled in the same manner: you dive in and start sending quick messages which arrive in a single undifferentiated inbox at their recipients. These tasks unfold in an ad hoc manner with informal messages sent back and forth on demand as needed to push things forward. This unstructured workflow arose from the core properties of email technology — namely, the standard practice of associating addresses with individuals (and not, say, teams, or request type, or project), and the low marginal cost of sending a message. It spread for the simple reason that it’s easier in the moment. It takes significantly less effort to shoot off quick messages, for example, than it is to more carefully plan your work day, figuring out in advance what you need, from whom, and by when." Email fragments attention From: A modest proposal: eliminate email, HBR, 18 February 2016: "... this incessant communication fragments attention, leaving only small stretches left in which to attempt to think deeply, apply your skills at a high level, or otherwise perform well the core activity of knowledge work: extracting value from information. To make matters worse, cognitive performance during these stretches is further reduced by the “attention residue” left from the frequent context switching required to “just check” if something important arrived. ...As more knowledge workers now acknowledge, the inbox-bound lifestyle created by an unstructured workflow is exhausting and anxiety-provoking. Humans are not wired to exist in a constant state of divided attention, and we need the ability to gain distance from work to reflect and recharge. Put simply, this workflow, which can transform even the highest skilled knowledge workers into message-passing automatons, is making an entire sector of our economy miserable." This has a substantial impact on productivity and job satisfaction, as outlined in books such as Deep Work, andFlow: The Psychology of Happiness: The Classic Work on How to Achieve Happiness. Email is asynchronous From: A modest proposal: eliminate email, HBR, 18 February 2016 "Synchronous conversation is efficient and nuanced: not only does it allow you to handle in three minutes decisions that might have otherwise taken three days of attention-snagging messages, but it tends to also produce more thoughtful conclusions. Imagine, for example, that Alice and Bob need to work together to write a report. If they use email, the process would likely unfold in an inefficient manner, as both Alice and Bob, under the Sisyphean pressure of an ever-filling inbox, keep dashing off quick responses to each other so as to temporarily clear the issue out of their psychic space. In the office-hours scenario, however, Alice and Bob would be forced to talk in real time about the report project. This interaction, though taking more time than sending a quick message at first, is more likely to lead to a complete and coherent plan for how the work should best unfold in the days that follow." Notwithstanding the above, I think there is a lot to be said for asynchronous communications. The answer should combine both seamlessly. Email is not secure According to a call to arms for e-mail security: "More than 80 percent of IT security managers agree that email is a major attack channel today. But, nearly just as many aren’t confident in their current email security and don’t think they could stand up to a future attack." Apache Wave Appache Wave (originally Google Wave) is the most interesting attempt that I have seen to find an alternative to email. Unfortunately, Email is too entrenched, and Wave was too ambitious and poorly understood. Google eventually stopped developing wave, and handed it over to the Apache Software Foundation, who continue to develop it into a usable protocol with easy to implement servers. Dealing with email is a significant activity According to research reported in City A.M. on 14 April 2015: - You spend, on average, 36 days a year writing emails. - You send, on average, just over 4,000 emails a year. - You receive, on average, just over 6,000 emails a year. According to The Talent Imperative in Digital Business: - German chemical company BASF found that project groups increased their efficiency by 25% by switching to a social media tool for collaboration, rather than email. There is a lot of investment in trying to solve the email problem The shift away from reliance on email is being made possible by funding. Sensing a great opportunity, investors are throwing money into companies creating systems that will draw people out of their daily email routine. - Sparrow, Mailbox, Boxer, Triage and Handle are just some of the firms that have caught the attention of venture capitalists recently.  - Task managers like Basecamp and Asana benefit meetings, reporting and browsing through a list of complete/incomplete tasks, but the tools don’t completely solve the problem.  - Content management apps like Evernote, Box, Dropbox and Google Drive also help, but they aren’t communication-oriented. - Workplace chat rooms like Slack are driving huge interest – the company drew 8,000 access requests in one day even before it was launched, and is now valued at $2.8bn (£1.8bn). But to really turn email on its head, an enterprise will require more than just a basic chat room. - New innovations are beginning to appear, like Quip, which allows you to create a collaborative document from an email thread. Align with the Certified Information Professional Certification objective on legacy communications Objective 1.r: Legacy Collaboration of the Certified Information Professional Certification is to Identify issues associated with legacy collaboration approaches, e.g. email - What do they think these issues are? - Is there objective merely to educate on, or to do something about these issues? - Who are the consumers of this education, and what might they be doing about these issues (other than just being educated)? Some companies are starting to ban internal emails For example, Thomas Knoll 'banned' email for all but a few specific tasks at his company, Prime Loop. he explains what and why at https://medium.com/life-at-primeloop/putting-email-in-its-place-27757946d9fe#.7bs3gogmx  There is a lack of engagement in suitable alternatives to email Whilst there is plenty of engagement with social media as an alternative to email, these platforms are not considered suitable for business records management [probably requires some elaboration as to why not...]. The internet is fragmenting from open standards into proprietary tools We need to continue to invest in open standards (like StratML, but also others) in order to combat this. Communications are fragmenting I used to have to watch emails. Now I have to watch emails, Whatsapp, Linkedin, Slack, Teams, Texts/SMS, Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, etc., etc, etc. Maybe the virtue is that most of those will remind me by... email... if I miss them! StrategyPlan_676bac22-3425-482e-8d44-c8a4c03b54a8 2025-09-04 https://www.stratnavapp.com/StratML/Part3/676bac22-3425-482e-8d44-c8a4c03b54a8/Styled Submitter_676bac22-3425-482e-8d44-c8a4c03b54a8